You're Full of Shift

“Don’t look now, but the shift is about to hit the fan”. It utterly amazes me how one simple small letter can change everything, right? How it’s subtlety can completely alter the effect of how we examine information.

Let’s take this title for instance. As you scrolled through, eyes darting back and forth, up and down, you are taking in and dissecting more information than the most advanced sophisticated computers on the planet.

If we were truly aware of this phenomenon, I believe we would be overwhelmed to the point that we may consider really limiting what we allow our eyes to focus on. Hmmm, I’ll leave that one right there.....

I’m not a betting man, but I would venture to say that your mind struggled, if only for a nanosecond when your eyes fell upon this title. Why? Because somewhere in your past you shifted into a way of perceiving this word and anchored a negative belief around it.

The word “shit” in the English language for me, sits on the lower rungs of the ladder, not ranking high, on my list of top bad words. It’s that one word that I was not so afraid to use, especially in my days of being a church member. It’s kinda like inside I believed that most people cuss, particularly men. But we get in these social circles and all the sudden mind our p’s and q’s. When looking back, however, dropping some heavier artillery may have done us all some good?

Over the years I have mulled over the word “shift”, as a result of the change, turn, relocation or transfer that I had to make somewhere along my journey. I also recall when getting the news, the initial words formed in my larynx were, “Oh Shit”. This didn’t apply only to have to make any major move or relocation, but just in general, practical everyday events. As a professional Chef, I had to make several shifts many times on any given day.

This shifting was and is still applicable across the board. And for me, it’s quite a few, when I factor in the number of different hats that I wear. I shift all day from one thing to another. You might even say that I am a quasi-shape shifter. I don’t think that we are aware of how much we actually shift due to the fact that most of our society is on autopilot. Shifting from one thought to another and actually believing that we had (in most cases) had anything to do with it. Do we have no clue of what it really means to be mindful, to be present, to just be? After all, we are human beings, not human doings.

Once we come to recognize cognitively, agree with, and have confidence that we have the ability to play a role in the outcome of any shift that takes place in our lives, things can really begin to shift! And the results can be strikingly in our favor.

Many of you that have any experience meditating have most likely also become aware of how critical it is to be mindful. Let’s take a peep at how the writers of Habit Nests, Morning Sidekick Journal, explain

                               The Relationship Between Mindfulness & Change:

We usually think of mindfulness as a kind of entering into the moment- learning to “be present”

Mindfulness is defined as the quality or state of being conscious or aware of something

The definition could not be more clear in explaining that “becoming mindful”, is really about the moving of our attention from where it is, to a different place.

We are always mindful of something- our attention and awareness are always SOMEWHERE, on SOMETHING.

To BECOME mindful means to notice where our attention naturally is. Once we are consciously aware of this, we can either follow the movement of attention or guide it in a different direction.

Moreover, mindfulness isn’t just about WHERE our attention is bit HOW our attention is being brought.

Here’s what I mean- let’s say I’m sitting down at work, but in my head, I’m replaying a difficult conversation I had yesterday with a friend or a loved one.

My attention is in the previous day, and now my thinking about the previous has a concrete effect on me THIS moment- whether it upsets me or causes me to feel anxiety RIGHT NOW is an important part of the activity of my attention.

Without learning to see how automatically our attention is captured and the direction it is captured in, changing our behaviors in the positive directions we wish, is extremely difficult.

If you would like to learn more about Habit Nest and the wonderful tools they offer for personal development, please click on the link at the bottom of the page.

As a born-again believer, I was terrified to meditate and shuttered at the mere sound of the word itself. Although it's used in scripture admonishing me to meditate on the word of God, my laziness often hurled me into a world of mysticism and unknowns, and all sorts of mysteries that welcomed fear and doubt rendering me a prisoner confined to a remote five by eight chamber. Never truly understanding the power of meditation and its rewarding implications. Until now.

Over the last few months, I have successfully shot “all”, of my sacred cows and crossed the threshold into the world of meditation. As I perused many sites and apps there was one in particular that totally got my attention.

Headspace https://g.co/kgs/WFua3h is the app that I use and it would literally require a minimum of five articles to begin to share with you the gains that I have received in my life as a result of taking the initiative to break free from the shackles and open myself up to a better understanding of meditation. I am so glad I did.

So, in wrapping this up do you see how you too are full of Shift? We all are, and sometimes it just takes us being mindful to perhaps a simple blog. It might just turn out to be the catalyst in us observing an area that we may take for granted but when once capitalized on has the potential to increase the quality of our lives markedly.

If you find yourself in a place in life where you’re still cleaning up the mess from your last shift. Why not wipe the shift off your face, shift to a lower gear and into a new way of thinking? Settle it in your spirit that you are full of shift and you are shifting on to greener pastures, to a new, best ever version of you! ;)

https://robertcoello.mykajabi.com scroll to the bottom and click on shop journals.